Psychedelics a research topic in cancer, anxiety

MEDICINE

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Stephen Ross, clinical director of the New York University Langone Center of Excellence on Addiction, is conducting a nine-month death-anxiety study in which patients receive psilocybin derived from mushrooms and psychotherapy. Illustrates MUSHROOMS (category a), by Elizabeth Lopatto (c) 2011, Bloomberg News. Moved Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2011. (MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg News photo by Paul Taggart.) less

Stephen Ross, clinical director of the New York University Langone Center of Excellence on Addiction, is conducting a nine-month death-anxiety study in which patients receive psilocybin derived from mushrooms ... more

Photo: Taggart, BLOOMBERG NEWS

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The synthetic psilocybin treatment room is decorated to create a peaceful atmosphere at the Bluestone Center for Clinical Research at the New York University College of Dentistry. New research in psychedelics such as psilocybin, the main ingredient in "magic mushrooms," aims for therapeutic uses, such as treatments for anxiety, headaches or quitting smoking. Illustrates MUSHROOMS (category a), by Elizabeth Lopatto (c) 2011, Bloomberg News. Moved Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2011. (MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg News photo by Paul Taggart.) less

The synthetic psilocybin treatment room is decorated to create a peaceful atmosphere at the Bluestone Center for Clinical Research at the New York University College of Dentistry. New research in psychedelics ... more

The 48-year-old mother of three was given psilocybin, the main ingredient in the "magic mushrooms" of the 1960s, as a remedy to ease anxiety. She spent most of her first "trip" crying, then emerged from the next with less anxiety, better sleep and happier relations with family and friends, she recalled.

The experience "really cracked me open," said Reamer, an anesthesiologist at Johns Hopkins before she was diagnosed with leukemia. "It let me be in life again, instead of this place of fear where I had been living."

Almost 40 years after Richard Nixon called former Harvard University psychologist Timothy Leary the most dangerous man in America for promoting use of hallucinogenic substances, there is a rebirth of interest in their therapeutic benefits. Reamer was enrolled in a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins to relieve fear of death in cancer patients, one of a half-dozen similar studies under way at New York University, Harvard, UCLA and the University of New Mexico.

Depression, headaches

The new research, largely driven by the psychiatric community, is also testing psychedelics for use against depression, chronic headaches and addiction as current scientists, much like their 1960s predecessors, seek to understand the "consciousness-expanding" effects of the drugs.

"There's a renaissance of interest," said Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UCLA, who researches psychedelics. "It took some decades for a new generation of scientists to step up, but there was never any doubt these compounds had potential. It was the '60s that intruded."

Psilocybin mushrooms are a schedule I substance in the United States, which means the government considers them to have a high potential for abuse and no legitimate medical purpose, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. These researchers think that may be incorrect.

Although there are biological components to anxiety and addiction, much of the underlying cause of these problems may involve how people think about the world around them, according to the researchers.

These drugs "diffuse in your brain and some people never see the world the same way again," said David Nichols, a pharmacologist at Purdue University.

Personality change

The research that includes Reamer is being run by Roland Griffiths, a professor of behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins. He's also testing psilocybin to help smokers quit.

On Sept. 29, Griffiths reported in the Journal of Psychopharmacology that use of psilocybin in an earlier study conferred a lasting personality change in some of the 51 participants tested.

"This whole class was declared too dangerous to proceed in the 1970s, and so it was put in a deep freeze," Griffiths said. "Sometimes I feel like Rip Van Winkle, awakening the potential for research with these compounds."

Similar work with cancer patients is being done by Stephen Ross, a psychiatrist at New York University in Manhattan. He's testing psilocybin in a nine-month death-anxiety study in which patients receive the drug and psychotherapy.

The patients are dosed in a room designed to calm them. They talk with the therapists about how they're feeling and what they're experiencing, and near the end of the trip, are asked to write journal entries. "Sometimes they look like they're asleep for hours," said Ross, who is also director of substance abuse at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. "Then they get up and tell us they've had an encounter with a transcendental force."

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